Chapter 49 - Ramsay
Silver lay in my arms, her cheek to my chest, her fingers trailing up and down the ridge between my pecs. Akiva had finally ventured into the room and sprawled herself across the foot of the bed.
Utter repletion and contentment glued me to the mattress and to the woman in my arms.
“Ramsay’s an alias?”
The question surprised me, but it also didn’t. More than anything it surprised me it had taken her this long to ask. “Aye. But it was my middle name.”
“Will you tell me your birth name? I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
Only the agency knew my birth name. Yet I found myself replying, “Logan. Logan Ramsay Ferguson.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“You … you’re definitely more of a Ramsay McRae than a Logan Ferguson.”
I chuckled. “Is that right?”
Silver nodded, her tone serious. “Yes. You will always be Ramsay McRae to me.”
I smoothed a hand down over her hip, her skin like warm silk beneath my calloused palm. “Aye, me too. This is the first place I ever really felt like me. The real me. So, aye. You’re stuck with me as Ramsay forever.”
“I know we got a little carried away during and post-sex … but, uh, we should probably talk about the forever stuff,” Silver whispered tentatively.
I tensed. “Meaning?”
“We haven’t spoken about what we both want. I know there’s an age gap so … I know it’s too soon to be talking about it, but I think we should know if there’s even a future for us before we get any deeper into this.”
At her nervous words, I tilted her chin to look into her eyes.
She seemed wary. Uncertain.
“Spit it out, angel.”
“I want kids,” she blurted. And then winced. “Not right away. But I want … I want a family.”
Ah.
Of course, my Silver wanted a family. After she’d lost so much of it.
I relaxed and her eyes widened as she felt my response.
“Do you?”
“Honestly?” I caressed her cheek with my knuckles. “I never thought a family was in my future. I never let myself dream about it. Until you.”
“Really?”
“Before the marines, before MI6 … I used to think about meeting the right person and having kids with her. Creating a family for myself again after losing mine.”
Silver pressed a slow kiss to my chest over my heart.
“I … I don’t talk about it a lot. Losing my parents. Because it’s hard. Everything I’ve been through and the terrible things I’ve seen people do … and losing them is still the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Emotion trembled on her lips, and I knew she understood better than anyone.
“I don’t talk about them a lot and that’s the way it is.” I gave her a squeeze so she knew it wasn’t because I didn’t trust her.
Silver nodded in understanding.
“Giving up the idea of making a family for myself again was one of the hardest sacrifices I made for the job.”
She pushed up, resting her chin on her hand on my shoulder. “And now?”
“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the thought.” I gently pushed her onto her back, smoothing her hair away from her gorgeous face. “But I’d want that with you. I see that with you. You. Me. Kids.”
“Akiva.” Silver grinned, biting her lip in that fucking adorable way of hers.
So happy.
She looked so happy.
It was difficult to believe I was the reason.
“And Akiva.”
“So, kids … yes?”
I nodded, heat flooding through me as I slipped my hand between us to tease her pussy. “We’ll have a lot of fun trying too.”
She gasped, arching into my touch. “When we’re ready. I want you all to myself for a while.”
I kissed her in savage possessiveness I kept on a tight leash, pushing my fingers into her snug, wet heat.
My want for this woman had never dulled, only grown exponentially, and I wondered if it would always be like this.
Or if it would eventually ease into something that felt more manageable to bear.
As I settled between her legs, as she opened to me, I thought, Fuck being able to bear it. This uncontrollable want was the best fucking thing I’d ever—
An alarm blared from behind the wall, jerking us apart.
Disbelief coursed through me.
Silver’s eyes were round with uncertainty. “What is that?”
“My perimeter sensor alarm.” I rolled off her and hit the wall light. The door to the hidden room opened and the motion sensor lights blared to life along with my monitors.
“Ramsay, what is going on?” I could sense Silver in the doorway.
“I have perimeter sensors set all over the island. Except at the crossing, though I have a camera there. If someone gets on my island from a less conspicuous point, I’ll know.” I clicked through the camera images of nighttime on Stòr. There was nothing at the main crossing because the tide was in.
“There.” Silver reached past me pointing to the third computer screen.
In the top right-hand corner, the camera attached to the outside of the white cottage showed movement.
Clicking on it, I dragged the timeline back a few minutes and saw the small boat pull up at my dock there.
The infrared revealed three figures climbing off the dock and onto the island.
“One of the sensors is on the dock,” I explained tightly, watching as the three drew up to the cottage.
Three men. In camouflaged fatigues. Armed to the teeth.
Silver’s breathing was sharp and shallow at my back. “Who are they?”
“I don’t—” I cut off as one of them spotted the camera and looked directly into it. “Fuck.”
After all this time.
“What? Who is that?”
“Ian Kingston.” I looked over my shoulder at Silver, panic thrumming beneath my calm facade. “Natalya’s husband.”
Her nostrils flared. “Has he been looking for you? Why?”
I straightened from the monitors, focused on them and Ian’s movements. “He blamed me for Natalya’s death. He thought I was the reason the Russians discovered where she was. That I blew her cover and our meeting that day was the confirmation they needed to assassinate her.”
“How did you blow her cover?”
“Because my previous operation had been in Russia. I was working undercover in Moscow as an English language and literature professor at the university.” Uncertainty that too much information about my past might drive her away caused me to hesitate.
With Ian on my fucking island, maybe I should deliberately drive her away.
“Don’t.” Silver reached up, taking my face between her palms. “I see that look. Don’t you dare push me away because of this.”
Fuck. No one instinctively understood me like her. It scared the shit out of me. “If you hadn’t noticed, you are currently in danger because of me.”
“What happened in Moscow?” she insisted.
I took her hands in mine, lowering them between us but not letting go.
“I was there to get close to a research professor. I can’t share the details of the research but suffice it to say, the British government was interested in acquiring the professor’s data.
She … she was interested in me romantically, so … ”
Silver squeezed my hands. I saw the flicker of discomfort on her expression. But she pushed it aside. “You had a relationship with her.”
“It wasn’t demanded of me, but I would do what I needed to do to succeed at an op. Unfortunately, she wasn’t only a research professor. She was working for the FSB—Russia’s counterintelligence agency.”
Silver frowned. “They knew her work was appealing to foreign governments.”
I nodded, unsurprised at how quickly she grasped the situation. “She was already on high alert and when I realized the professor suspected me, Natalya arranged my extraction. However, the Russians looked into me and through me—”
“They found Natalya.” Silver’s gaze turned back to the monitors. “Ian blames you.”
“Aye.”
“Why now? Why after all these years? Surely, he could have found you before this?”
Aye, he could have.
I suspected I knew why he’d come now, but I didn’t want to scare Silver. “I’m going to lock you in this room.”
Her eyes flared. “No, you are not. There are three of them out there and they’re armed.”
“And I won’t be able to focus unless I know you’re safe.”
She jerked her chin in defiance. “Behind you on the wall is a .22 small bore rifle and I know this because my dad’s idea of bonding was to take me to an outdoor rifle range every other weekend.”
Shit. I remembered she’d told me that when we first met.
“Now I’m not saying this to be arrogant, it’s just the truth—my dad harped at me for years to shoot competitively because I am a crack fucking shot.” She gestured to the gun. “Does it extend to two hundred yards?”
A dichotomy of feelings hit me at once. Pride. Fear. And arousal. I reached for the gun, taking it off the wall. In the drawers beneath the computer, I found the bullets. “Load it.”
Silver loaded it as if she were at the Olympics.
“This is not the time to be turning me on, woman,” I murmured thickly.
She rolled her eyes. “Men.”
I looked back at the monitors. Every time they tripped one of the cameras, it flared to life on the screen.
My fear for Silver was pushing to the surface, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t force her to hide.
It wasn’t who she was. Even if that scared the shit out of me.
“They know where the house is. They’re coming. ”
Despite her bravery, her voice shook as she asked, “What’s the plan?”
I would kill Ian for putting Silver through this.
“We’re both still naked, so clothes first. I’ll give you something dark to wear.”
Akiva jumped off the bed to watch us dress. Feeling our tension, she gave a wee yip. “Ssh, sweetheart. Be quiet.”
“What will we do with her?”
“She’ll try to protect us, so I’m locking her in here.”
Silver nodded in agreement, her cheeks pale, eyes dark with worry.
I marched back into the room with the monitors and cursed as I saw what they were doing. They had the house surrounded on three sides. They had to know I knew they were here after Ian saw the cameras, and yet they’d left the back of the house uncovered.
Because they didn’t think I’d run.
As I armed myself, I laid out the plan to Silver.
“I’m not leaving you,” she hissed.